Former Naas Mayor Darren Scully and 'black Africans' - ignorance is no excuse for racism

Darren Scully's political campaign poster

The town of Naas in Kildare is a sort of second home to me, as it’s where a good friend of mine from college now works and lives. As such, whenever I hear the town's name on the news, my ears tend to prick up.

Imagine my dismay then when I heard the unholy reason my ears pricked up earlier this week. The town’s erstwhile Mayor, Darren Scully, made the extraordinary announcement – on local radio, no less – that he was no longer going to be dealing with the constituency issues of "black Africans".

His reason? He had experienced aggression and bad manners from black constituents. When it was put to him that what he was doing was the essence of racism, his defence was that he was just being honest and forthright, that he didn’t think of himself as racist, that he has black friends and has great craic with the black taxi drivers talking about football, basically crossing off every square on the “I’m Not Racist But” bingo card.

Now there are some flat out, irredeemable goons in the Irish political sphere, but Scully really does shine out among them.

For starters, if he had a problem with rude people at clinics, he should have said so. If he’d said “I’ve been getting some grief at clinics, and I won’t be taking that anymore” then that would have been fine, so why the arbitrary targeting of black constituents?

I absolutely refuse to believe that black people are his or anyone else in professional politics’ sole transgressors. After all, without white people being aggressive and ill-mannered about political issues there’d be no such thing as talk radio.
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And then there’s the issue of a public representative literally making discriminating decisions about who he serves based on a prima facie judgement which is as repugnant to his vocation as it is to humanity. His attempt to justify himself (there were some people from “other backgrounds” living in the area that he also did not deal with) only goes to show how ridiculous his views are.

Sadly though, Scully’s views are emblematic of a way of thinking that still exists, however outdated. A way of thinking that maintains it’s OK to say whatever drek you like so long as you’re “just expressing your opinion” or “just being honest”. A way of thinking that carelessly throws monstrous generalisations around in reference to the industry and motives of entire nationalities and ethnicities. A way of thinking that luxuriates unashamedly in its own narrow-minded conceit. I see it and hear it in all sorts of places, sometimes even within the comments section of this very website. It’s pathetic.

The most galling thing of all though is the sickening hypocrisy that lurks around the corner from this kind of feckless, witless bloviating. A friend of mine told me this week that there are reports in some local conservative media outlets in Canada that have been hostile to recent Irish arrivals, questioning their work ethic and such. If those reports became plentiful enough to be covered back home, those same fools who castigate the blacks and the foreigns here would be up in arms about how shoddily the proud Irish people are being treated, how at least when we went places around the world we worked for our keep dag nabbit, and how the Canadians are just a bunch of Brit lovers anyway, before rallying for a boycott of maple syrup, bacon, Due South, ice hockey, Gordon Lightfoot, politeness and Robin from How I Met Your Mother.

And while Darren Scully as Mayor jettisoned black Africans who live in his own town, if Paul McGrath was signing his book in Naas, or Samantha Mumba was opening a club in Naas, you know full well he’d be over to them so quickly he’d leave a plume of cartoon smoke behind him, with a corral of photographers in tow.

Naas is a commuter town, and as such it is inhabited by great swathes of people who originate elsewhere, both from other countries and from other parts of this country. Far from diminishing your environs there is great joy and value to be had from people living and working and playing with people who aren’t all necessarily from the same townland as you. And, in the same way Irish people have brought that joy and value to all corners of the world, my own life would have been a whole lot duller without the wide cultural influences I’ve been exposed to as a child, things like British TV, American politics, Jewish comedy, oriental cuisine, Latin music or black culture in general.

This week marks the anniversary of JFK’s death, and in an all-too-pertinent clip about Civil Rights he said no country can be free unless its citizens are free also. As Irish people and citizens of the world who know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of unfair and unfounded abuse, we must not tolerate such blind, mendacious prejudice when it happens to other people. It’s time for the likes of Darren Scully, and the woodwork emergers backing him up, to step out of their caves. They might learn something.

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The Democratic Unionist Party neurosis - dribbling while Northern Ireland burns

DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson

There are times when I look at the Northern Ireland I remember as a child and marvel at how far we’ve come, how in so many ways we’ve managed to look beyond old obstinacies and petty rivalries and create a more open, tolerant society.

This week was not one of those times.

Despite making great strides since their bogeymen days, to the point where they seemed positively reasonable during the last Assembly election, the DUP have managed to consolidate all their crazy into one manageable weekly repayment. Exhibit A: the ever-tiresome capital punishment debate.

A recent law in the UK means that if a public petition gets more than 100,000 signatures, it has to be debated in parliament. Inevitably, hang ‘em and flog ‘em got on the agenda, but among those most keen for the debate were DUP MP’s David Simpson, Gregory Campbell, Jeffrey Donaldson, Jim Shannon and Sammy Wilson, who tabled a parliamentary motion on the matter.

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Never mind the fact there isn’t a shred of evidence that the death penalty does anything but regularly kill innocent people, never mind the fact that the state reflectively killing people is an inherently bad idea, not least in a state with its fair share of ruthless killings over the years, never even mind the fact that the death penalty is expressly against the rules for any country in the Council of Europe. Then again, if some of the DUP MPs weren’t known for being mad, they wouldn’t be known for anything at all.

One of those MP who’s never had a problem with notoriety is Jeffrey Donaldson, Enoch Powell’s apprentice and Daniel O’Donnell lookalike. For most of his career he’s been known as one of the great intransigents, although he’d mellowed somewhat in recent years. That was, at least, until he took issue with a new rule affecting the Royals and their marital choices. Basically, Jeffrey isn’t happy future monarchs can now marry Catholics, so much so that he and a group of other Orangemen delivered a letter to Downing Street about the matter on Remembrance Day. This is in the same week that a Spotlight documentary on Northern Ireland TV revealed that the Orange Order reprimanded two senior Ulster Unionists, leader Tom Elliot and Minister Danny Kennedy, for attending a Catholic requiem mass for murdered PSNI officer Ronan Kerr.

And if that wasn’t enough Peter Robinson gave us a brief glimpse into the past by threatening his resignation this week. The reason? The Justice Minister David Ford is considering a new emblem for the prison service, one that may not have a crown on it or any reference to Her Majesty. That’s it. In an atmosphere of enormous social and economic problems, it’s good to know the biggest party in Northern Ireland have got it covered.

Twenty-six-years-old and the living is easy - reflecting on being a year older

Reflecting on a a birthday

I've been a bit distracted this week, and not just by the Dublin Divas. Not only did I turn 26 this week, but I'm also doing a review with the youth group I work with, and recorded videos for the 10th anniversary of Dáil na nÓg, an event I've attended twice, the first time in, gulp, 2002. And, with Michael D Higgins being inaugurated today, I've been reminiscing about the last time a President was elected.

I actually remember it quite vividly, because it was the same date as my 12th birthday party. And that night, after my party (three hours of indoor football, followed by cake eating) I went to Eason’s in Derry to buy a book I’d long coveted with my card money (some things, it seems, never change) and took to reading it while watching Mary McAleese’s acceptance speech. It certainly doesn’t feel like 14 years ago.

Now, as I stare into turning 26 and it stares back into me, birthdays aren’t so much a pretext for putting scoops of ice cream in a large glass of coke and pretending to be your favorite goalkeeper so much as it becomes an inventory on how your life is going. I’m not sure how I rate.

On one hand, I’ve had the chance to do things 12 year old me would not have imagined possible, and it’s only really when you take a step back do you realise how far you’ve come. On the other hand, most of the world’s top sports stars, actors and popstars I see about the place are now younger than me. A lot of said stars can dive into their pits of money like Scrooge McDuck, boast of winning myriad world championships and step out with jaw-droppingly good looking other famous people. I have not much money and fewer awards to my name. I’m not stepping out with anyone, jaw-droppingly good looking or otherwise. I don’t even have a cat.

While I’d describe my outlook on life as generally sunny, I feel a lot of pressure. Sometimes I feel anxiety that I won’t get to where I want to be in life, other times I’m out and out terrified about it. A lot of the pressure is internal, as I’ve always had a very clear idea of what I’ve wanted to do in life (something for which I actually feel quite lucky). Some of it is immediately external, in that family and friends and colleagues have always seemed to have very definite ideas as to where I’d end up. My biggest fear is that, for whatever reason, I don’t fulfil that prophecy. But some of that pressure is also cultural.

In ways the problem of pressure to be successful at a young age is not dissimilar to that of body image. Sports and pop stars are given enormous credence in popular culture, arenas of achievement where being over 35 gives you the status of a veteran, or even a retiree. We have popular music talent shows where teary fortysomethings claim “this is their last chance”. We have TV modelling shows where girls in their late twenties, even if they’re Christy Turlington facsimiles, aren’t even considered. With such a message surreptitiously being delivered at every turnabout, small wonder I often see the podium after a grand prix and think “Christ, I am wasting my life”.

But when I have such moments of (increasingly frequent) raw panic, I always try and step back. I may not be worth much, but I’d hope I’ve done things of value, particularly for other people. The setbacks, near-misses and frustrations of my own career seem rather small when you consider the throngs of potentially talented people who’ll never even have a chance of getting in the game. I also take comfort in the fact that in the history of everyone who has ever been successful there was a time when they weren’t, and that not everyone’s time comes right away. The actor Jon Hamm worked as a waiter and a designer on a porn set when most of his contemporaries were getting cast in Dawson’s Creek and Party Of Five, but becoming Don Draper is probably worth the long apprenticeship. Dancing judge Len Goodman is a massive transatlantic star but he was hardly in front of a camera until his late fifties. And how many films have you ever seen featuring a 30 year-old Morgan Freeman?

It's good to reflect now and then, but too much of it stops you from doing anything new. And as long as you can do something you enjoy, and that others can enjoy too, then everything else is just scale.

Prayers for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi from the most Christian man I know

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi

Not a great deal happens in east Donegal by and large, but one of the more bizarre stories of last week happened a couple of miles down the road from me.

At Sunday Mass in Raphoe last week Fr Dinny McGettigan, in addition to praying for the recent dead, also prayed for Colonel Gadaffi. It raised a few eyebrows elsewhere in Ireland, and indeed beyond, but it didn’t surprise me at all, because I’ve known Fr Dinny for years. 

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In fact, he was my school chaplain at Deele College in Raphoe for five years. He was my religion teacher for the last two, running classes that had a satisfying catechism : talking about football ratio. In the area he is known mainly for three things: power-walking with a luminous vest on, getting people’s names mixed up (he called me Seamus for extended periods of time) and being the most relentlessly Christian man there is. 

A couple of years ago, he was attacked in the middle of the night by a burglar who stabbed him several times in the head and chest. Once well enough again, he went to the assailant and told him he forgave him, and pleaded leniency when the case came to court. I’d never heard anything like that before and haven’t since. 

The reason I write this is because while an apparently eccentric comment made by an apparently eccentric priest is inherently newsworthy, the person behind it often gets lost in the “And finally” jollity. In praying for Gadaffi, Fr Dinny cuts to the heart of genuine Christianity: if you can’t pray for the worst among us, then you’re missing the point completely. 

Regular readers will know I’m no great clericalist or defender of the faith, mainly because the Catholic Church has deviated so wildly from the original message of Jesus. A Church that literally claims to be “Universal” has become defined by the people and ideas it rejects. Men of God should be above all else compassionate, thoughtful and merciful. Thankfully, in Fr Dinny, we still have at least one.